


When Regiment is Gone

by CindersAndBrimstone



Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: F/M, Fanfix, My rage has only recently subsided, Past is prologue, Religious Delusions, episode fix, eternal ramblings of a very spotty mind, months late because i am bad with words and time, not a trekkie, wildcard mirror burnham
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-05
Updated: 2018-03-05
Packaged: 2019-03-27 07:37:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 16,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13876239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CindersAndBrimstone/pseuds/CindersAndBrimstone
Summary: The conversation I assumed would have happened in Past is Prologue. The backstory I anticipated...Where MU Lorca is less of a criminal mastermind and more of a guy who got recruited for a coup because the girl who told him to sign up was crazy but also hot.PU Michael is the one who doesn't give a damn this time around; she just wants to get back home and finish the war. If she needs to take a delinquent captain back in handcuffs, then so be it. She's not a mutineer for nothing. Knocking captains out when she disagrees with their bullshit is her speciality.





	1. Carrot Sticks

**Author's Note:**

  * For [chromeknickers](https://archiveofourown.org/users/chromeknickers/gifts).



I've seen angels fall from blinding heights

But you yourself are nothing so divine

Just next in line

 

 

************

The monitors blinked and died as she shot the cameras out. She was coming down the gangway, _marching_ at him, and he very nearly flinched, a mixture of dread and wonder stirring in his gut.

If he’d left well enough alone, right about then they’d be cruising through that _Other Space_ rescuing sentient jellyfish or whichever equally absurd wonderful new species they came across. He’d had a captain’s chair. A ship at his command with a functional spore drive. The most trusting crew he could have ever hoped for. Burnham… With a little elbow grease, he could have carved out a little fiefdom of his own smack dab in the middle of all their Federation space. He could have ruled. Wolf in shepherd’s clothing.

The piece in his ears crackled to life. Landry. Warning him about the obvious. “She’s coming to you, sir. Should I keep searching for the others? Do you need me?”

“I don’t need you,” he barked and then cut his comms-link off.

Others? After two years? Georgiou had never been in the prisoner keeping business. He’d survived her wrath by escaping to exile in a foreign dimension, but who else had been that lucky? Save for the odd straggler or two, there’d be no others.

Still, it hadn’t been the worst two years of his life. He’d been fighting and damned near single-handedly _winning_ a war with the comfort of carte blanche in his back pocket. _Kill all the Klingons you like_ , both universes had agreed.

He could have had the girl; Ash was a Klingon. To think how easy it would have been to convince the crew to do away with him. If not the crew, then surely he could have worked Stamets up to it. _“Can you really tolerate this? He washed Culber’s blood off his hands and apologised… but can murder be forgiven? You’re a good man, Paul. If he’d done that to me…”_

Gabriel exhaled.

Roads not taken. Airlocks not opened.

Instead, he had traded his hypo-allergenic Starfleet blues for an uncomfortable, barely functional breastplate. Abandoned his vaguely pine-scented bridge for musky corners and dimly-lit armouries. How ridiculous would it be if she killed him in an armoury?

_Focus._

He shoved one gun into a holster and started checking the calibration on another. Just in case he had to shoot her in the face.

It had been foolish bringing her aboard in the first place. _Brainless._ But even as he chided himself, his eyes sought hers out on the monitors, the few that hadn’t gone dark. Large, mirthless… She was angry.

And the familiarity of her disapproval made him smile.

Pure indulgence, to keep her with him. Carrot and stick in one package.

 _Michae_ l and _Burnham_ , was how he kept them separated most times. But sometimes they were _Michael_ and _Other Michael_. Or _Michael_ and _New Michael_. Or _My Michael_ and _Other People’s Michael_. Or _Bad Michael_ and _Good Michael_. Or _Bad Michael_ and _Worse Michael_ … He hadn’t found a way to compare the two that felt fair to both. There were long endless days when the two Michaels couldn’t be more different and then, randomly, she’d say or do some minuscule thing and he’d lose his mind in an evanescent — _effervescent_ — rhapsody of terror where the two blended into one giant shadow-woman ordained by every devil to follow him from past to future, from universe to universe to universe…

A comforting terror.

Better the monster than to see how empty the abyss really was. Better the fear.

So many times his Michael would come at him with some new apocalyptic drama he’d be obliged to fix. A bit annoying, a bit endearing. _“Tell me exactly how the sky is falling today and what you’d like me to do about it."_ So long they’d lived inside the belly of the dragon, he felt strange not having his feet in the fire. He missed her panic. He missed her needing him.

This one solved her own problems.

She passed each surveillance camera with a glare. _“I’m coming.”_ Coming to confront him with her anger, cold Vulcan logic, superior Vulcan ethics and just a smidgen of condescension as she let him know that he’d had his fun and playtime was over. He grinned at her undaunted face in the monitors as she marched on him.

What mad irrationality had he been in the grip of, to ever mistake the Vulcan solider for his Michael?

It hurt too, as much as it amused him.

If she were the real Michael Burnham, she would have been irate. There would have been screaming, tears, general ugliness and death threats.

This one never so much as smiled if she could help it. _Doesn’t pout, barely laughs…_ The Vulcans had nipped all of that in the bud. His Michael had been a hyper-vigilant wreck of a person. She could fight, she could fuck, she could fall apart like nobody’s business. _Never_ logical. But she’d been real. What arrogance had possessed him to think he could teach a Vulcan to feel?

In a pathetic way, he wished that Ash’s betrayal had hurt her more. Just so he’d have evidence of her having a heart. She’d been with him physically. Had made excuses to cover for him… But she’d turned him in at the end because her love, whatever that looked like, had limits. Conditions. And when he’d failed those conditions, that love had been rendered invalid.

He was amazed that now, even knowing that the Klingon was a Klingon, how little anger or jealousy he felt. In a way, he felt like the overseer of an experiment. Which had failed horribly. Young and soft around the edges, he’d just assumed that the lieutenant Ash Tyler would have been the one to show her the way. The way to what, he didn’t know…

_“So what if you came to blows? Love is painful. At its best, it ruins you. Go back and practice.”_

It was laughable to think about... But only Michael Burnham could take a dedicated Klingon radical and effortlessly make him fall so in love with her that he forgot he was a Klingon radical. The man forgot his entire mission... Hell, he’d forgotten his name. If he’d ever needed proof that she was who she looked like, that was it right there. Classic Michael.

The armoury doors hissed open — of course she wouldn’t be stopped by silly things like passwords — and suddenly she was there. Standing ready and staring him down.

“Burnham.” Always strange, using her name. Miraculously, he found it in him to level the gun at her. Not quite a panicked cry of _“Get back!”_ But just about as paltry. _I have no obligations to this one_ , he thought, as he stared down the phaser at her. He could shoot her, couldn’t he? She was a stranger.

He squeezed the trigger the tiniest bit, just so she could see the muzzle glow…

“Gabriel.” She met his eyes, not cowed in the slightest. She ignored his finger on the trigger and the neon blue barrel whirring to life as if it were a child’s toy.

She _knew_.

He could see the hollowness of his bluff reflected in the perfect calmness of her eyes. The relaxed set of her shoulders. Her empty hands and empty holsters. She didn’t need to be a Vulcan genius to figure out that he’d never hurt her. As close to the vest as he’d held his cards, he’d been transparent in so many other areas. Even the other sheep in the herd must have had their own suspicions.

She closed the distance until she was a foot away from him, right in his face.

And he stepped back. Just so he could breathe without having to breathe her in.

Was it infidelity to know what this one smelt like? To wonder at what she must taste like? He wanted to run his fingers through her shorter hair, just to know if it felt the same. How much of an unforgivable sin against his Michael would it be to kiss this one? Or would she be flattered — that he’d crossed a dimension just to pick up a goddamn souvenir? It wasn’t as though he had photos.

He was already staring at her mouth, so he read it off her lips rather than heard it with his ears, when she said his name the second time. _“Gabriel.”_

And just like that, despite all his caution, he was lost in another one of those reoccurring memory storms.

Memories of the very first times she’d said _“fuck that”_ to his attempts to maintain such trivial things as discipline and personal space. She’d asked him — _ordered_ him, because daughters of emperors don’t ask — to teach her how to fight. Not just how to point and shoot, but how to hold a knife and a sword. How to stab and slash.

_Come Gabriel…_

Never sir, never captain, never commander… Never fear, never respect… Just an almighty trust in him to always be there. To never disappoint her. To never hurt her. To always serve. To always protect.

_Teach me… how to get blood on my hands._

_Mother said to pick the best weapon I could find._

His name felt wrong in the mouth of this Other Michael. Sounded stiff. Robotic. He’d gone out of his way to not so much as touch her, and now she was saying his name with her Klingon-kissing mouth. It felt like theft. Like she’d stolen the word out of his Michael’s mouth and made it banal.

Could he allow that? The phaser trembled with his indecision. Could he let this one live?

He could justify fucking Cornwell. Michael had never taken issue with his cruder methods of luring women over to their cause. She’d even gone so far as to pitch a seduction of Georgiou to him.

_Would she deny you? Could she?_

_Come on, man. She’s not_ your _mother, you must have thought about it._

But even the simple action of looking at this one felt like a betrayal. Had he aspired to shape this one into her replacement? What weakness had made him so complicit? How had he planned to fix this broken thing? Take a chisel to her skull and just undo her twenty odd years of brainwashing? Maybe. It was appealing, the idea of scooping all the Vulcan bullshit out, replacing the pedagogy with a real human soul to hold the shape. A grand masterpiece of taxidermy.

His stomach turned as he stared into her placid face. _Her_ dead face. Had he actually been tempted by this necrophiliac simulacrum?

He’d found her body and brought it home. Her ghost was everywhere — around him, inside him… Had he hoped to transplant her soul into this walking corpse? And then what? Put her on a throne and present her to the universe like a street magician? _“Ta-da! She lives!”_

Arms folded, inanimate, she only looked at him. “Why did you rescue me?”

Abrupt. Or had she been talking the entire time? Why was it always so hard to give a shit? She would open her mouth and his attention would drift. _Fake Michael._

“You thought you could do it twice?” Her voice was flat, words flat. Not enough passion in her to keep anger going. Just questions, so she could solve puzzles and fit clues together. Like a little rat working for its cheese.

Ludicrous. That she could think that he could want her. This ironically naive girl who managed to be the ointment and the fly in it all at the same time. Five minutes after their very first conversation he’d been already thinking _“Well, let’s try another universe.”_ All he’d have to do was hurdle the laws of physics three times in a row, find one person in a universe of trillions, and come up with a friendly way to kidnap her.

“Do what, Burnham?” he asked, wanting to avoid a scuffle on one hand but on the other, _eager_ for a chance to throw all his cards on the table and then kick over said table. He let the gun drop to the table and holstered another on his thigh.

She cleared her throat.

“Tried to do what, Burnham?” He crossed his legs and tried to strike a casual pose against a case of assorted grenades. “Make your accusations,” he snapped.

Her jaw clenched. “To seduce me over to your… rebellion. Use me. Like you did with the version of me from this universe, the emperor’s daughter.” The allegation fell hard and heavy between them. “You rescued me, hoping that I’d be so grateful to you for saving my life that I’d blindly go along without ever noticing what you were really up to?”

“But you’re not — grateful, that is— because gratitude is just another sentiment Vulcan’s don’t believe in.” His hands tightened into fists for a  brief moment. “So let’s move on. What exactly do you think I’m _really_ up to?”

“Ousting Georgiou and ruling the empire as a Usurper—”

“As a _King_.”

“King?” The same eyes that had set him on this path so many years ago, on this same ship, inspected him coldly. As if he was some two-bit hustler.

“ _‘Under universal law we’d be usurpers,’_ is what I said. But you told me to trust you. _You_ sold me on this grand design, so don’t you judge me for it now.” He all but spat the words even though he knew they’d mean nothing to her. This Amnesic One. She wouldn’t remember. She _couldn’t_ remember. Could _never_ remember. Her soulless eyes… If only she could hate him. He could work with hate… but the cursed indifference. “Goddamn you, Michael. Can’t you fucking remember?”

“This has nothing to do with me,” she hurled back at him. “I have _no_ interest in this conflict.”

Even their voices were different. This one was loud. Direct. Top notch enunciation. The other one used to whisper. Always near, always against him, always under his skin — he’d never had to hear her to know what she wanted or needed. She spoke with her eyes, and her body and her fingertips. Invitations. Promises. Everything with third and fourth meanings. Always layers. Always bait. Always something to stir the appetite and get you to swallow the hook whole even though you could feel that sharp edge cutting you raw as it went down.

Did he bring this one here just to have this argument? To finally get it out of his system, everything he could never have said to that other betraying bitch who went and got herself killed and left him with nothing—

_I don’t mean it—_

“Goddamn you, Michael!” he shouted, snapping like a stick in a stampede. He kicked over the crates behind him with one powerful shove and an animal noise. “Do you think I ever, _ever_ , wanted this? Any of this? Roving through space like a vagabond? Hated on all fucking sides? I have nothing! _Nothing_ , besides my vengeance and I am going to kill that woman if it’s the last thing I do. She killed you once, go let her do it again if you want.” He didn’t mean to shout. He knew better. It wasn’t her fault that he’d thought that he could magic her into being a completely different person. It wasn’t her fault that he’d started a rebellion because the sex was just good enough to make a grown man think, _‘Yeah, fuck your mother_ and _her empire.’_

“ _I’m_ not going to stand down. And that’s what you want, right? That’s how you operate, Michael Burnham. By persuasion. But I’m not going to debate this with you. What do you know about her?" he snarled. "She looks like some woman you knew for a _minute_ and you choose her over me? And I’m some idiot holding his dick in one hand with a squashed rebellion in the other?”

_I hate you both—_

He snatched up the phaser he’d just strapped to his thigh, primed it in milliseconds and aimed it between her eyes. “The river is dealt and I’m all in, so fuck you Michael Burnham and all your goddamn values and your whole goddamn face.”

Then he pulled the trigger.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song lyrics:
> 
> "You Know My Name" - Chris Cornell


	2. Chekmate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> MU Michael x Lorca Flashback.  
> Because "Why not?"

Her fight and fury is fiery, oh, but she looks

Like sleep to the freezing

 

**********

 

“Under universal law we’d be usurpers,” he’d murmured as she’d grazed her face against his neck, half-dozing down his chest.

He’d been in love even with the way she slept. Like a cat. Half domesticated, half feral. He’d loved the way she’d stretch herself across him. Like a blanket. He’d loved the way he could feel her heartbeat even through the callouses of his fingertips. He’d tell her she was too thin, and she’d laugh.

_It’s a lions heart. She stole me away from a pride of lions…_

One of their last times together. She’d beamed him across on some flimsy pretence of needing an update on already recruited rebel forces… And he’d tried to talk her out of the entire thing. _We shouldn’t... We can’t… But what if…_

There hadn’t been any witnesses but all the gods knew, he’d tried. At least, he’d tried to try. For a brief moment. For the few seconds between her doors sealing shut behind him and her getting her hands on his neck, pulling him down to her level. To kiss him. Desperately. As if she’d been drowning without him. Or as if she wanted him to drown inside her. More that than the other way, he thought, as he remembered struggling. His hands clutching at her as he gasped. Air and concern for his life leaving him as he surrendered.

Months ago… Years ago. Or yesterday. He remembered it so clearly. Being inside her and wanting to die.

_Right here. Right now…_

He’d tried to will himself to die.

In her usual way of testing him, she’d pulled her phaser from under her pillow and put it to his head. She’d liked testing him. Liked pushing past whatever his last limit had been. With the muzzle pressed against his skin, he had smiled. “You probably should pull that trigger, because if this goes bad… Something happens, and I can’t get to you— _Anything_ happens to you, I’ll make your mother look like a pacifist. All these people you want to liberate from tyranny, I’ll kill them. All these Kelpians you want to save, I will personally eat them all. I won’t care how fat I get.” She’d bit his stomach then and both of them had laughed. Lower and lower, sharp nips followed by a soothing pass of her tongue… His thoughts had drifted in and out of focus as he stared into the amber lights in the ceiling. “It won’t be pretty. I’ll go barking insane is what’ll happen, and they’ll have to put me down for my own good.”

That was how he remembered it, looking up into her eyes as she rode her second or third climax out. He’d known, right then and there, how hopeless it all was. She’d built him up into something he wasn’t. Made him into a hero. Someone she could trust to win. But he’d never won anything. His only talent was for surviving where others died. He had a knack for outliving the people around him. He could see it clear as anything. She was going to die, and he was going to be somewhere surviving with all the other vermin creatures of the world. It had all been so clear in that moment what his options were. _Die now, or die forever._

But he hadn’t stopped. The clarity had only made him realise how weak he was. That he might never die unless she killed him.

He’d taken the phaser out of her hand, tossed it across the room and kissed her. Flipped them both so that for one short breath he could have her on her back again. Hoping that maybe he could get back to that one time when she hadn’t ruled him.

Two seconds later, she was straddling him again him, one hand on his chest, the other around his throat.

She’d promised him torture the very first time they’d gotten together, when he’d thrown her inexperience in her face. That first time which had been, _and most likely would always be_ , the most blood-crawlingly awkward sexual experience of his life. She’d thrown a gold coin at him and made reference to ancient emperors of Rome buying women for the young princes. Then she’d interrogated him. Then she’d tried to talk him into bringing Landry in on it, _just to watch_ , so that _the consummation of their noble union had a reputable witness_ at which point he’d had to remind her that he was but a pheasant whore bought cheaply to initiate her in the ways of the world and that there was absolutely nothing noble about was was going to happen between them.

That last time she’d closed her fingers around his throat and squeezed.

The way he’d thought her to hold a snake many, many, years ago… Before either of them had gotten a taste for rebellion or power.

“It’s not a rabbit or a bird,” he’d whispered as they’d crouched in the wet grasses of some backwater planet that still had thriving fauna. “You can’t afford to be gentle with things that can hurt you. Establish dominance. Take control.”

“Like this?” she’d asked and then grabbed at the rattler with more enthusiasm than any girl in any universe had ever demonstrated at the prospect of handling venomous reptiles. She’d made a proper mess of it the first couple of times. Daughters of emperors were not renown for their excellent survival skills.

_Like this?_

It had irked him the first time she’d slipped into that role of favoured pupil. Made him feel old and dirty to be reminded of his days when he’d not been an equal or a lover but a teacher. Damn near a father figure.

And she’d laughed at how she’d disturbed him.

_Are you ashamed?_

_There’ll be none of that in my bed._

_You put that conscience right back where you found it. Don’t pretend it's yours…_

It had been rough going in those early days, transitioning away from being people who worked together on a ship to people who worked together in a bed. Accustomed to being the authority between them, he’d not taken well to being put on his literal back. Accustomed to following his directives, she’d refused to allow him any further ground. Shame on his part, inexperience on hers, entitlement and competitiveness on both sides… In a sense, it had been the furthest thing from love-making. The love had been there, they’d just had so much trouble getting it going. She had wanted to punish him for seeing her as a perpetual child. He’d resented her for growing up and making things complicated. How many times had they started out with one of them saying no and the other one not giving a fuck.

_You can’t tell me no, Gabriel. That’s not how this works._

_Do you have any idea how empty your life would be without me?_

_Would it help at all if I called you Daddy?_

The first time she’d put her hands around his throat, he’d been irritated. He’d been right up to the end of his wits with her. To the point where he’d been starting to suspect that it was all an elaborate ruse orchestrated by the mother to drive him insane and catch him with his pants down, finally giving her an excuse to have him thrown out a hatch.

She’d just held him there, shaking her head to tell him not to resist. She’d held him and watched as the anger flared up in him boiling hot. Watched the muscles in his arm clench as he lay there choking silently under her. Watched his eyes redden and tear up.

Watched him calm himself and submit to her will.

_There. See?_

_Do you see?_

A display of dominance if ever there’d been one. She didn’t have the skill or the muscle mass to overwhelm him. There was nothing she could do to hurt him in an actual fight. Every thing she knew on combat she’d learnt from him. But still, she’d won.

_Do you understand?_

And he did. He’d understood it perfectly right then, the one great truth of his life — that it had never been his. All he had to do was choose his owner. He’d sworn himself to Georgiou but Michael had picked him out of the emperor’s pockets. And that was all there was to it. Better slight of hand than his, more daring than the mother, why not? Who else was there?

In command of her first ship, about to take her first planet, he’d stood hovering on the bridge giving last minute advice. Regurgitating every potentially applicable aphorism. “If you can take it, it’s already yours. Possession at any moment is inconsequential.” On a ship full of greenhorns, he’d been the most disoriented one. Not knowing where to stand. What to do with his hands. Half wanting simply to hit her over the head and stash her in a closet until all the fighting was over. Was he the only one who saw how ludicrous it was? Michael? Going down to conquer a planet? Yes, they needed its dilithium resources. Yes, they needed it as a Terran outpost. But to risk the heir to the empire over it? He’d been flabbergasted when Georgiou had informed him that she’d be sending Michael down. He’d wanted to raise a hand and politely ask her if she’d gone insane recently. “ _My_ Michael?”

“Never hesitate. Anticipate.”

“Rah, rah, rah… _With a monarch’s voice, cry Havoc and let slip the dogs_ … Rah, rah, rah.” Always trivialising his concerns. “Are you a warrior or a worrier?”

Her fingers on her throat had been terrifying. And exhilarating. To realise that he’d let her choke him to death if she wanted to… To know that no matter where or when he died, on a battlefield on in a bed, it’d be in her name.

_Like this?_

_Exactly like that. I’m not a rabbit or a bird..._

People always remarked on _falling_ in love, but there’d been no particular point in time that he could look back on and think _‘There. That was when I fell.’_ Because he hadn’t fallen. He’d been taken down by a tactician. Had his knees cut out from under him. The pride he’d felt at that. At how expertly she’d called checkmate on him. Stripped him bare and held him there, _denuded_ , with no moves, no means of escape… Not even a desire to escape.

Like stealing Eve out of Eden only to realise that she’d been the snake charmer all along, teaching him how to slither and slide. Setting him up to bare his fangs against empire and empress in her name.

_Universal law?_

He remembered the way her tongue felt against his ear. Her heat on the side of his face. He remembered wondering what she’d eaten and why she smelt so much like cherry. He remembered the feverish warmth of her body. The weight of her long lean frame so fucking much like a cat’s. A wild, dangerous, bloodthirsty but very, very soft cat.

_My mother treats you like a lackey._

No matter which way he spun their story, there was no noble version. There’d been no time when he’d ever tried to resist. A lifetime of training, utterly foiled by her hand threading through his hair. At that point, he’d lost track of the number of people he’d killed. Millions, or billions at the the push of a button. Hundreds directly on the point of his sword. Men, women, children. And yet, somehow, the most precious, most fragile human thing in the known universe had fallen into his hands.

_Are you a lackey?_

“No.” A lie. He was every lowly thing under the sun, trapped and helpless under her hundred and twenty pounds.

_Good._

_Because universal law is for lackeys._

_Context for kings._

He remembered her purring in his ear. Almost malicious, the look of complete victory when he finished inside her. Her cheek against his. It always baffled him the contentment he felt at being so totally under her sway. Someone like him who’d done everything in his power to cut out every weak part of himself.

Too soft, he’d thought, as he’d clutched her to him, afraid she’d blow away even though his chambers were hermetically sealed. She was all steel inside but still, somehow, too soft for their world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song Lyrics:
> 
> "Cherry Wine" - Hozier


	3. Dissonance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Conversation continued.

Our hopes and expectations  
Black holes and revelations

 

********

 

She stared at the charred spot in the wall behind her. And then back at him. Feathers unruffled.

“I don’t care about your rebellion and I don’t care about the Terran Empire, this isn’t my universe. You and Georgiou,” she continued on, as if he’d not fired his laser just centimetres over her shoulder. “I don’t know either of you at this point. Why should I trust you over her? You’re the one who’s lied to me over the course of months and left us all stranded in another universe. How are you in any way more reliable?”

 _Not Michael._ Not even with the face and the uniform… He knew this, but still…

The first cracks in the delusion had set in when she’d mouthed off to him about being on borrowed time. His control had been stretched like violin wire. _Stolen_ time. The resentment had set in that exact instant and he’d thought, _"Go then and die.”_ He’d let her board the Klingon ship with Ash and thought, _“There are other Michael Burnhams. I can lose this one too.”_ He couldn’t love her in every universe. Some he’d just have to abandon.

_Joke’s on me._

She’d not even flinched. She let him grandstand, point a gun at her and even fire said gun because she _knew_. She’d just been letting him know that she knew. It hadn’t shocked her when he’d dropped the gun as though it had hurt him to hold it. As if the laser fire had ricocheted off the wall and come back at him with double the force.

_I should kill myself…_

“Have I eaten Saru?” he supplied. Was he physically incapable of shooting her in the head? Had her brainwashing been so thorough? “Months on a ship with me, Burnham, have I eaten anything with a name?” Suddenly, everything hurt. His body, his brain… His whole existence. He felt stretched, like an old rubber band on the point of bursting. “Doesn’t that automatically make me better?”

“I don’t know what you eat in private,” she answered coolly.

“I’m the one who’s never threatened you.”

She gave his dropped gun a pointed glare. “You _just_ shot at me. Thirteen seconds ago.”

 _Had he?_ It was encouraging though that they could still talk to each other like rationale adults. That she wasn’t holding his deception against him. A person with emotions would have felt betrayed but not this one. She could understand these things. She was a mutineer herself, long before he’d ever laid eyes on her.

She came around to the other side of the table and leaned against it. So relaxed. Casually confident in her ability to kick his ass if and when she chose. “What was your plan for me on this ship?” she asked. “You must have known the truth would have been revealed—”

It was all he could do not to groan. “You don’t know the truth about _anything_.”

“Not the truth about you and… my counterpart,” she provided, easily. Too easily. As if it had nothing to do with her. “But the truth about who you are. It seems like too much of a gamble to assume that I’d be an asset rather than a liability. It’s so outrageous, I think it’s more likely that I wasn’t part of this plan at all.”

“What? You don’t believe _this_ ,” he gestured between them, “is all my master scheme? Don’t I seem like the ‘kidnap a princess and rule a kingdom’ type? I’ll have you know that I am every bit the fire breathing dragon, you have found yourself in my clutches, and alas for you my darling, you’re fresh out of knights — Lieutenant Tyler being what he is... You can try to save yourself of course, but I’ve been known to bite so I wouldn’t recommend it.”

She smiled off the weak shot on Ash. Most likely she’d already amputated that emotional tumour. Cauterised the wound. “You came here for a throne?”

“What else is there, Burnham?” His life had become such a series of catastrophes. Returning to the _Charon_ was supposed to feel victorious, but it didn’t. He felt like a hobo. An emaciated hobo whose teeth had fallen out so long ago, he couldn’t remember how to eat. There was no hunger. No resurgence. No revival. He was a hobo who had crossed dimensions just to crawl home to die. And Georgiou would make it spectacular. “I’ve never known my place. My ego has been described as _majestic_ on two separate occasions. My ambition is apparently vaulting. Mother Georgiou is an _eagle_ scout if ever there was one, so what’s confusing you?”

“The lies are confusing.”

“Which lies?” He felt drunk. Like a drunk hobo balancing on a curb. “If I had to argue this at a tribunal, I’d frame it as more of an omission. My name _is_ Gabriel Lorca and I _am_ a Captain of a predominantly human organisation. It’s not like I’m a Klingon who goes around seducing human women. It’s not like I failed to report that my boyfriend had some serious issues that could endanger everyone whose security he was ironically in charge of. I bet Culber could have used a heads up on that… And I’m not trying to shame you. I’m just confused about your confusion.”

“You can’t shame me,” she followed smoothly. “But you can explain your part in this conflict. Help clear up some of the shame that’s been heaped on you.”

“Except I’m a shameless vagabond. The truth doesn’t matter.”

“It always matters." The determination in her voice. "Georgiou told me her version of events, I want yours.”

“My version is less popular. Doesn’t sell well. Didn’t you find hers to be… _enlightening_?”

“Some parts, yes.” And in a dazzling display of human expression that would have knocked him on his ass if he’d not already been sitting, she raised an eyebrow at him. “You’re intelligent. Efficient. Ambitious. Amoral… All of these things are true, but there’s one glaring invention in her argument against you.”

“Which is?”

“The bit about you grooming me,” she answers easily.

Not the most ridiculous lie. He _had_ been overly attentive. He _had_ loved her. He _had_ known her from childhood. He _had_ mentored her. It was all a matter of context, really. From the outside looking in, he could see how a person could have that impression. Hell, it had looked seedy from the _inside_. How many nights had he lain there feeling like the worst cad in the universes? _Two_ universes, now.

He felt himself smirking, “Are you defending my honour, Burnham?”

“ _Her_ honour.” One of her hands clenched into a fist. “I don’t see myself as a victim in any universe. People lower their eyes when I step into a room. People fear me here. I don’t believe that you could control her by acting the demanding father. I’m a mutineer whose fate was _entirely_ in your hands and you never once used that leverage. Why? You can exploit paternal affection but when you save my life you give the credit to destiny? I’m supposed to believe that you corralled the emperor’s daughter? Over _years_? The idea that you could bend anyone to your will is ludicrous.”

“Is it?” He should have been relieved that she wasn’t about to burn him at the stake, but it felt as though she was selling him short. “ _You_ can’t be groomed? That has to be a joke, Burnham. You’re practically a Vulcan, that’s how susceptible you are.” It had never been beyond him to use a woman. “I got you _here,_ didn’t I? Got the entire crew of the Discovery here.”

“Because we’re the _Discovery_!” She was almost laughing at him. She’d never been so relaxed in his presence. Almost friendly. “It doesn’t take Machiavellian skill to trick a crew of space explorers into exploring space. You only steered them where you wanted. No one opposed you. At a glance it may seem genius, and you might _feel_ accomplished about it…” she frowned. “But from what I’ve seen, it seems accurate to say that you’re outright _inept_ at bending people to your will…”

Never one to pull punches…

“Which follows. The person who sits at the right hand of a tyrant wouldn’t _need_ social skills. In a civilisation where life is meaningless, you wouldn’t have to be _persuasive_ when ordering them about. I imagine the agonisers, the screaming and the bodies floating just outside their portholes are more effective than any threat. So why would you be charming? Where in this place does one practice beguiling young girls? Unless you want to claim it as a natural talent. You don’t even have the grace to keep Tilly on your side and Tilly’s on everyone’s side.”

He groaned remembering the woman. _Hold your horses._ Had anyone ever deserved to be thrown out an airlock more?

Her large eyes never left his face. More eagle than doe.

“Also, this Georgiou would have killed you the moment she suspected you of any untoward action against her daughter. She killed six men in my presence for the sole purpose of showing me how easy it was for her. She held a blade to my throat while _believing_ that I was indeed her long-lost Michael. She’s not the wilting mother who’s helpless to protect her children. She’s ruthless. She would have killed you in a heartbeat.”

Not a heartbeat. It had taken some time. And she hadn’t killed him, just her daughter.

His gut spasmed at Georgiou’s threat. He’d not taken into consideration the risk for Burnham. She’d killed a Klingon and he’d taken that as proof that she could handle herself, but Klingons at least were open about their desire to kill you. Georgiou wasn’t the type to issue a duel, or carry out a trial…

Yes, he’d suspected that she’d been responsible for Michael’s death — no one else would have dared — but he’d never considered that the woman would have it in her to do it _twice_. She’d never been the type to forgive and forget, but— He exhaled heavily and ended the train of thought right there as it started.

_Don’t think about it._

_She’s not dead, she’s right here…_

“You, on the other hand, _know_ I’m not your Michael,” she continued unaffected, “And yet, you go into a conniption at the slightest—”

“I do not.”

“I had to publicly shame you into letting me do my job.”

“It was dangerous, and you came back beat to shit.”

“It was dangerous for everyone!” she smiled. “It would have been dangerous, exponentially more dangerous, for whoever you sent as my surrogate. Tyler came back with another personality. The admiral came back with both her legs amputated—”

“That’s _my_ fault?” he huffed. Mirrored her casual air. “She’s an admiral, for God’s sake. They’re the ones who are _supposed_ to bear the burden. But you… Kill one Klingon and suddenly you’re some battle-hard warrior who is _constantly_ volunteering for the most dangerous missions? All to minimise the risk of losing who exactly? Some random—”

“See?” she interrupted pointedly, triumphant eyebrow in place. “Conniption.”

_She would have been insufferable._

“Also you failed to notice my lie.” The momentum was with her now and she was pleased as punch about it. _Animated_. “The admiral came back with all her limbs, but you didn’t know that because you didn’t so much as visit her.”

What nonsense… “Why would I, Burnham? Your point is?”

She nodded. Checking in another ten points in the imaginary debate she was winning. The colour in her cheeks, the light in her eyes, the smile, the skin? All of that was just for show. Under it all, she was Vulcan. “The point, _doubly_ evidenced, is that you care about my safety to the point where you ignore other parts of your so-called grand plan. If you were a master seducer, you would have gone to the admiral when we had rescued her, while she was exhausted and mentally vulnerable. You would have at least _pretended_ to be relieved that she was alive. Even better, you could have charmed her into believing that it had all been a rescue mission set up deliberately to retrieve her. She was supposed to be you friend.”

He shrugged.

“She could have been an ally,” she pressed.

“Why would I need an ally? We’re in two different universes.”

“To the truly ambitious, two universes would mean two _opportunities_ . They think _long_ -term, you’ve not thought beyond today. People who start rebellions can never have too many allies. They forge attachments on instinct. _You_ have trouble making friends and learning people’s names.”

 _Stamets, Saru, Detmer, Hugh, Rhys…_ “Well, we can’t all have your skill at being intimate with strangers.”

That stopped her cold. She only stared at him, shock evident on her face and then she swallowed. “If you go after the emperor, you’re just another upstart.” Ten points for perseverance. “As cruel as this civilisation is, it figures that wannabe rebels are neither few nor far between. There’s no way a high ranking officer — someone who has already done the hard work, who’s has climbed all the way up to the position of right hand man, who has every privilege he can think of as the second most powerful person in the chain of command — decides to take off the uniform and join up with the rebel rabble. You would despise these people. You are not a _liberator_ at heart.”

“Why do you assume I’d be a liberator?” he folded his arms and tried to look as though he cared. He didn’t, but this was perhaps the longest conversation he’d ever had with this one about something not xeno-anthropological and he didn’t mind it. Not quite the casual conversation he would have preferred, but it wasn’t bad. The timing was wrong, he had an emperor to kill, but still. Who else was he supposed to have a final conversation with? “What if I had appealed to her other detractors? The people who want someone sterner? You’ve not considered the people who want a more draconian ruler.”

“And that would be you? With your fortune cookies and pet tribble?”

“It’s not a pet.”

“I know.” Her eyebrows furrowed and he braced himself for something scathing. “You use it as a recovery animal. It helps you feel less alone. The same way you use _me_ as a recovery Michael Burnham. As long as I’m here, you didn’t fail her. As long as I’m within arm’s reach, you can tell yourself you haven’t lost her. You asked me if I wanted atonement. If I wanted redemption. If I wanted to comfort myself with the thought that my Captain Georgiou hadn't died in vain. I believe all of that was projection. A psychological defence mechanism where—”

“I know what projection is. We have schools here too, Burnham.” The _ego_ of this woman. “Not fancy _Learning Centres_ , but I can read.”

“I’m not critiquing your education, simply highlighting how unconvincing you would be as a ruthless tyrant. What would you promise them — these people who desire an increase in their level of daily fear and oppression? Those six men she killed wore gold cloaks. I assume they were important. Her own daughter is presumed dead. I assume, as well, that Georgiou killed her because I think we’re all agreed it wasn’t you. What could you promise these people? Faster, more indiscriminate executions? _More_ widespread nuclear destruction of whole planets? _More_ total extinctions of whole species? Or simply tinted glass?”

It wasn’t the light itself that hurt. Just the transition. They weren’t all born in the sunshine. The kind of wonder she’d been born with. A whole galaxy of light and freedom…

_Should have been ours…_

“If you seize the throne, you’re an upstart that none of these equally ruthless people tolerate. They’ve all made sacrifices to get where they are. They’ve all survived this hellhole. The only thing keeping them in line is the illusion of an inherited throne.”

In a matter of days, she’d already grasped their essential nature…

“ _You_ trust the system. You trust Georgiou. My counterpart doesn’t. There is no pretence of affection between them. Only secrecy and suspicion, and a pathological game of oneupmanship. She feels every day how much she _isn’t_ this woman’s daughter and she expects that every single person on this ship with working eyes sees it too. She’s already had to kill. I’ve read her file, so I know there’s been attempts even though much of it is redacted. Half of her authority comes from her ownership of you—”

He scoffed. There wasn’t a lot he could say to counter her, but the resentment was there again. Where did she get off, painting them as scurrying cockroaches? What right did she have to judge them when she’d been born into a universe that cuddled her? Mothers and fathers. Siblings. A whole planet full of Vulcans in her weekly debate club picnic meetings. A Georgiou with motherly instincts. What had Michael gotten?

_Me?_

“She understands that these people will never give her the throne. She knows she’ll be killed so she comes to you, the only person she believes genuinely cares about her, with plans to… take preemptive action. You’re the only person she can come to with treason. As loyal as you are to Georgiou, as much as you love your own privileged life, you love her more and she knows this.”

“Does she?”

“Yes. You have trouble affecting indifference.”

“Yeah?” The ease with which she summed up his life was comical. A conspirator and her hatchet man? It sounded true the way she put it. Simple. Nothing fanciful about gods and destiny, just two people with a plot…

“She expects you to set aside allegiance and self-preservation in her name. Which you do. If she kills her mother, she’s worse off. They can kill her and call it punitive justice. So the plan is this— You defect publicly and sow unrest, discontent, in the rank and file. You don’t care why they follow you, you just need the numbers. You sell it with whichever promises you need. It’s a revolution, no one is expecting a manifesto and your reputation for getting things done helps. Whatever her reputation was, it didn’t inspire confidence—”

She’d been antagonising. An outsider from the start, Michael had put up walls, lined them with barb wire, dug a moat around those walls and then set the moat on fire for good measure…

“— so _you_ had to be the face of the cause. And with them under your control, you kill an emperor and throw the empire into chaos. All of a sudden, the empire has an uprising at the door. While they’re looking out, in the chaos, you slip her on the throne. She’s the heir presumptive so it makes sense. No one in the Terran command makes too much of a fuss because the familiar face calms them. She represents order and control, which is all they want. Then the rabble resides, because the only thing you’ve actually promised them is change and you have delivered on this — you changed their emperor. Swapped out the devil they knew for the devil’s daughter they’ve only heard about from time to time. She can’t be worse. Yes?”

He shrugged. Not exactly correct but close enough. Eerily close.

“It’s not so much a coup as an acceleration of naturally occurring events. I imagine it was more complicated. _Byzantine is best_ , after all. But altogether, not bad.”

_Her benevolence approves. We are saved._

“Something happened. Georgiou found out. Something you hadn’t anticipated which led to her death… and all of this is your bid for vengeance. To make it all mean something. You’re starting to realise how big the world is, how many universes exist, how alone you are in all of them… And it terrifies you, because you don’t like the void. As much as you stare into it, you need to always be chasing down the starlight.”

_I should kill myself…_

“How did Georgiou find out about the affair though?” she asked, something like actual interest in her eyes. “I assume it was my counterpart at fault. You’re too good at deception.”

“Ha.” It felt wrong talking about her with this one, but then, if he couldn’t talk to this one, he might as well cut his tongue out. “ _My_ fault, actually.”

He knew she didn’t care. Couldn’t care. This was all work-up to throw him off his goal. To get him nostalgic for a person with her face and then try to bend him into coming out with his hands up…

“She was down on one of the fringe systems. Outskirt dead space that had been a mining colony. Minor rebel activity, no red flags. Andorian and that sort of dreg. Georgiou sent her out, said it was routine inspection. Nothing routine about it.” He had to do it on one breath. “When she got there, they had been in the middle of an internal…” he shrugged trying to think about a way to downplay it all, for his own sake more than hers. “… a bit of domestic terrorism. And she wasn’t… she wasn’t like you. Reactive. She was premeditated. She was lethal. She just wasn’t—”

 _As strong as you?_ Was that where he was going with this?

Her first sparring class, Landry had broken her nose and there’d been such a commotion. _“You let your old fucking hag whore put her hands on me? Abuse me like this? I’m going to cut her hand off with a hot butter-knife. By all the gods, I swear. I’ll have my vengeance, Gabriel.”_ Even at the end, she’d never learned how to take a punch. She flinched, froze up, dodged in the wrong direction, missed her counter-punch by miles. In the end, he’d given her a dagger and told her to simply kill anyone who got too close.

_Not a fighter ._

“Her escort got ambushed. And… They took her hostage. They—”

Weren’t scars supposed to heal? Sometimes, all he felt was raw. She was dead now. Absolutely everything had already ceased to matter. It made no sense for him to be this tender about it still. “They cut her here,” he said, voice warbling slightly as he mimed a mark on his neck. “One carotid, one jugular. Left her to bleed out on broadcast. Georgiou let it air across Terran space. Tried to make it into a teachable moment. As mothers do when their children are being murdered. You know. The standard warnings — _The enemy is everywhere. Expect betrayal at every turn. This is what happens when you think you’re untouchable - no one’s untouchable._ I couldn’t watch her die so I—”

He’d put a gun to Stamets’ head and went after her. Beamed himself down to the godforsaken planet and carried out a massacre so heinous he’d created a whole other teachable moment. _Know your enemy. If his name is Gabriel Lorca, try not to fuck with him._

_I rescued her._

“I started with the young. And the elderly.” He couldn’t even make something up about being haunted by the horror of it all. Couldn’t fake guilt. As horrible as the results had been, the slaughter had never been better. Nuking planets, shooting men down with phases… All of that was clean and easy. Nothing beat being on solid earth. Nothing beat feeling flesh give way to sharp metal. Nothing beat feeling bone shatter under the blunt force of his hands. He’d gone off to live and die among the stars, hoping to find anything to make life worth the effort. And then they’d had her and he’d realised he didn’t give a fuck about the stars.

His fingertips slid down the smooth blade while the other Burnham watched him. Could she guess at some of the things he’d done? He’d known then the kind of animal he was. The kind of human he wasn’t. He wanted to tell her. Wanted to upgrade her data files with all the facts about the real him, but he stopped himself. Old instincts winning out to shield her as best he could from the true terrors of the world. “But I got to her in time.”

She squinted at him. He saw the eagerness in her eyes to know more, saw it struggle against her impressive restraint. “You fell out of her favour for rescuing her daughter? If she didn’t die in the ambush, then how?”

 _Alone_.

He’d spent two days in a chair at her bed in a medbay on a private moon waiting for her to open her eyes with Landry sitting at the foot of the bed out of concern for him in case she didn’t make it. As if he’d been frail romantic, prone to hysterics. “It took me three days to check in with Georgiou. Three _days_ for me to remember that there was a chain of command.”

It wouldn’t have been hard to turn it around then. He’d gotten the people on his side. Years had gone since the last campaign of pillage and plunder, and they’d been thirsty for that blood. All their planning and prepping when all he’d needed was a sword, a breastplate and a bit of carnage. Georgiou was total in her destruction… He’d shown them something beautiful.

“I don’t know if it’s been properly impressed upon you,” he said wearily, “but being Emperor is a big deal over here… People, specifically your right hand man, are supposed to give a fuck about you. Rescue missions need to be sanctioned. Even if you’re as lowly as a Kelpian slave, you need her permission to die. We had to put more distance between ourselves after that. I went public with my defection, she cosied up to mother dearest. I’m so far away... And one day her ship is gone and I can’t get a clear answer as to how, when or where. And not long after that, I’m gone too.”

“I take it that I don’t compare favourably to your original?” And then she set those eyes on him.

“She never cut her hair. Dyed it grey once, so it would reflect what an _old soul_ she was at heart.”

True, but not the answer she wanted.

“Were you disappointed when you found me?” _Tell me everything_.

Gabriel sighed, feeling the anger seep out from him. “Burnham…” All he’d wanted to do was arm up. And now she was holding him here. Stalling. Using herself as a distraction. She was a curious cat but smart as well. Playing on his inability to leave her alone. He chuckled. “When I realised I was in a different universe, the first thing I did when I got access to Starfleet’s database was search you out. When I found you I didn’t know what to think. You were dead. You were alive. I’d known about it before I crossed over. The Defiant was where she learned all your Starfleet values about hope and equality and overthrowing tyrants. I knew about counterparts and their differences… But it’s one thing to know, and a very different thing to believe. And I believed, Michael. I’d have gotten to you by cruiser, warship, cargo hauler, rowboat, whatever it took. That was the extent of my belief.”

Dark days of desperation.

“But then I decided to play it cool. See, it occurred to me that if the Michael Burnham of this universe was _anything_ at all like _my_ Michael, then I’d just have to sit back and let destiny run its course. You’d come to me. You’d do something big, and illegal, and dangerous and when you decided you were in over your head, you’d let me know where and when to pick you up.”

“I didn’t—”

“ _Months_ ,” he cut her off. “It only took months for you to start the Battle of the Binary Stars and get your Georgiou killed. The first person in the existence of the federation to mutiny. All I could think was _‘_ _That’s my girl.’_ But what were you going to say… You didn’t what? Didn’t do what you felt you had to, damn the consequences, fuck the repercussions? You didn’t do everything in you power to get what you wanted? Because your way is the only way?”

Georgiou had had a singsong way of putting it...

_Leave her alone, and she will come home, dragging bodies behind her._

“Insurrection is in your DNA, Burnham. And _that’s_ why I rescued you. Anarchy is in your nature.”

“And chivalry’s in yours?” she mocked.

“You think rescuing damsels in distress is _in my nature_?” He’d laugh if it wasn’t so ridiculous. “Just habit and training,” he mused, unsure whether they counted as one damsel or two.

And then he regretted it, knowing exactly what his Michael would think of being called a damsel. Distressed or otherwise. Funny the way even his own thoughts could assail him on her behalf.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song Lyrics:
> 
> Starlight - Muse 
> 
> It should be the theme song for the entire fic, really.


	4. Babel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> MU Michael x Lorca Flashback.  
> Because again, why not?

Oh I heard you were trouble

And you heard I was trouble

 

*******

 

Memories of a younger Michael. Tucked away in one of the dark corners of the libraries studying the contraband literature of Old Earth.

“Don’t you see it?” she asked, lamplight making her eyes eager. “They had a god. The way we have my mother. It all makes sense now…” She flipped through the pages, zero regard in her excitement for the durability of the book as she scattered the loose sheets of old yellow paper. “See here? ‘ _For he_ — or she, in this case — _shall give his angels charge over thee_ — that’s you, Gabriel’s the name of an angel and mother put you in charge of me — _to keep thee in all thy ways. They shall bear thee up, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone.’_ ”

“And?” He hadn’t been in the mood for another one of her flights of fancy. She was brilliant, but there’d been days when he’d truly believed it was all just a mask to hide complete insanity. “Names don’t mean anything,” he said yawning. “It’s because of this ego that you don’t have fiends your own age, you know.”

“It means everything,” she countered. “It’s all happened before. It’s all to happen again.”

“What’s to happen again?” he’d asked, leaning over her shoulder to scan the pages for himself, but thinking mostly about his replicated steak getting cold in his quarters and his chilled champagne getting warm. All he’d wanted to do was wash the day off and surrender himself to sleep.

“I don’t know,” she pouted, “But an upheaval of sorts, I’d imagine. If I have it correct, I’m supposed to martyr myself.”

He’d laughed out loud at the that. The sound had echoed through the otherwise still chambers like cymbals clashing. “This is the shit you read on your days off, cadet? And you wonder why you’ve not been promoted. You know what’d be nice? If you put a _quarter_ of this dedication into passing your law exams. Fail that, and I _guarantee_ you there’ll be an upheaval. She really will put you on a ship, you know. And you’ll drum out so fast… Is that what you want to be, the greatest shame of the greatest empire?”

She’d dismissed his concern for her career with an airy wave of her hand. “I’m going to do something monumental. And they’re going to kill me for it. And they’ll think they’ve won. But then,” she snapped her fingers, grinning, like the pretty, mad creature she was, “Little do they know, it’s the spark that sets the whole revolution burning, because I’ll be _resurrected_.”

“Of course you’ll be,” he chuckled. “But with you dying, I take it that at this point I’ve lost my job? What am I in your grand future, princess, unemployed or dead?”

“You might as well be either, Gabe. You’re a shitty guardian angel, if we’re being honest.”

“How so, princess? I’ve been keeping you alive for _years_.”

She pointed an accusing finger at his nose and flicked the tip of it, huffing. “I can’t remember a _single_ time you’ve born me up lest I dash my feet against a stone. The other cadets call me Michael _Dashed Feet_ Burnham, that’s how dashed my feet are. It’s no wonder they kill me in the future, you slack off so much. You’re _never_ there when I need you, you don’t help me in my exams—”

“How can I help you in—”

“You report everything I do to my mother, and you’re the most notorious philanderer in any system. None of the angels in this bible fight or fuck half so much as you do, you barbarian, and I doubt very much they had eyes like yours. Although they’re _supposed_ to be terrible to look upon… They go everywhere saying _‘Be not afraid’_ to calm the people — but _you’d_ never be that considerate. You like it when they’re afraid.”

He’d tried to keep the irritation off his face. “What will it take to get you to check in with your mother? I’m _not_ going to spend the rest of my night down here with you in this place. Some of us have lives to live. Real, present tense lives.”

She closed the book. “You want me to go see my mother?”

“Yes.”

“Then take me to her.” And she’d held out her hands like a child asking to be carried by its mother. He’d been struck dumb for all of half a minute. A full half minute where she sat, perfectly poised in her chair with her arms reaching for him. “ _Bear me up_ in you hands, lest I dash my foot.”

He’d been disoriented for that stretch of time. _Addled_ by her audacity. “Are you ordering me to carry you?”

“Lest I dash my foot.”

He’d gestured at the military issue boots she wore. “You couldn’t dash your feet in those if you tried.”

And she’d raised an eyebrow at him. Challenge accepted.

Off came the boots. Off came her socks.

And he’d just watched her. Waiting for her to make whatever point the whole show was leading to.

She took the lamp she’d been reading by, plucked it off the table, turned to hold it between where she sat and where he stood and then let it fall. The glass shattered, the oil spread, the fire caught and then the fire-retardant flooring kicked in. Then, slow enough to give him plenty of time to intervene, she put her feet down on the broken glass and stood.

She didn’t wince. Didn’t flinch. Just stared him down. Waiting to see what he would do about it.

Which had turned out to be absolutely nothing. He’d just stood there, transfixed by her and the blood haloing out around her feet. Confusion, a bit of fear and the slightest touch of awe holding him in place. He’d wanted to wait her out. Make her march with her cut feet all the way back to her quarters. He’d wanted, too, to kneel, take her feet in his hands and pull each splinter out with his bare fingers. Better that her blood should be on his hands than wasted on random stone.

Caught between two instincts, he’d snatched her up, tossed her over his shoulder and beamed them both to the medbay where he tossed her on a white gurney she immediately stained red with her bloody bare feet. Doctors, nurses and assistants started their scamper to get to her. Last one there wasn’t a dead man, but it was an unenviable position regardless.

She eyed them with distaste. Eyed _him_ with disappointment. “You’ll need to cut that response time in half, Gabriel,” she’d muttered as she inspected her feet, seemingly shocked that the glass had actually cut her. Shocked that he’d let her be cut more than anything, most likely.

“Is this to become a new habit?”

She frowned as she watched her blood bead on a piece of glass and then drop. “This is sloppy. Dereliction of duty… That’s what I’m going to say when I show her my wounds,” she threatened him airily.

He’d sucked his teeth. “Insubordination,” he had countered, checking his accusations against her off on his fingers. “Two — Being absent from classes, _without leave_ , for days—”

She put her hand to her chest and gasped dramatically. “You knew I was missing _for days_ ? And you didn’t come find me? _All_ of this is dereliction, Gabriel. I could have been _kidnapped_! By brigands! They have brigands on Earth, you know. London was thick with them. And the rebels, Gabriel!” she tsked. “Whole rebel hordes, I had to wade through.”

“That’s why Landry went down to shadow you. _Absent_ , I said. Not missing.” One of the doctors had arrived then, a tray of tools rattling behind him as he jittered about, nervous in his own workspace. A shock of unkempt red hair. Freckles…

“G-g-g— Goodness,” he stuttered out, “I mean— Good. Well, no. No! No, no, no. Bad! Not good!” The colour had drained from his face as Michael smiled at him. Not her proper smile, but the kind of face she made whenever she found someone new to terrorise.

The man stopped himself short, swallowed a deep gulp of air and exhaled purposefully, seeming to know on instinct that he was very near to irrevocably having his name added to one of their shitlists. “I only meant that I am honoured to serve the… the Imperial… the Princess? The imperial princess?” Then when he realised he’d been looking her in the eyes, he’d snapped his neck down to his chest. “The High Princess?” he floundered. “The—”

“Dammit, man. If you’re not better at your job than you are at speaking words—”

“Right, sir!” And the ratty man, had jumped into the task with a flurry of forceps, gauze and cotton. He moved quickly. Like a scuttling crab.

“Now, where was I…” he’d propped himself on a desk. All the better to hover over the buttermouth. “Right. Your absence without leave—”

“There could have been lepers, Captain Lorca.”

“But there weren’t, _Your Imperial Highness._ ” The doctor swallowed audibly but kept to the task. “I always know where you are. Now, don’t distract me; _three_ ,” he resumed counting off her charges, “Restricted reading, again. Four, attempting to blackmail an officer, and five — two counts of vandalism. Eternal shame upon you.”

“ _Two_?” she glared at him with mean cobra eyes.

“The book and the lamp,” he’d smirked. “Paper is priceless and glass isn’t cheap.”

“You Judas!” she’d shrieked. “What’s the point of you being my disciple if you betray me like this the first chance you get? I’m the prodigal heir presumptive, returned to you after six day and seven nights in the wilderness. And _this_ is how you treat me?” And then she’d turned to the poor doctor as he taped her bandages down, rattlesnake versus field mouse. “He did this to me, you know,” she informed the man. “Made me walk over broken glass. I expect that to be in your report.”

The doctor had finished with his task promptly with a droning hum, slowly backing himself out of the cubicle.

“Can’t you _pretend_ , at a fucking minimum, to be at least approaching maturity? What do you think the word is going to be when that cur sets to talking about his encounter with the mentally unstable _High Princess_? Hmm?” He’d been so frustrated then. Tired. Weary. Wanting to wake her up to the reality of Terran life on the _Charon_. “You’ve no friends here. No allies. And your reputation is in freefall. More of this, I’ll wash my hands of you. I mean it, Michael.”

“Like Pontius Pilate?” she asked somberly.

“Who?”

“A roman prefect who liked to wash his hands whenever he shirked his responsibility. I thought you said you’d die for me if need be. Isn’t that what you swore to my mother?”

“Emphasis on _if need be_.”

“You’d risk your life, but not your position, not your rank, not my mother’s favour, not your reputation…” She’d had a way of shaping words into scalpels. “But you’re right. The time has come for me to… _put away childish things_. I’ll have you released from my guard detail when I meet with my mother.”

“Princess—”

“No,” she’d cut him off, and pulled a page out of her coat pocket. Yellow, fallen apart, ripped from its book. “It’s all written, you know. Everything. None of our lives is by chance. None of our choices are free.” Then she held the paper to the weak bulb on the wall. “Listen to this. _'Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing.’_ ” She paused and met his eyes for a long, silent stretch of time.

Treason.

He’d known it right then and there. Seen it in her eyes. “She is sounding brass and the clanging cymbal. She removes mountains before she has breakfast without ever thinking about who’s living there. And yes, she took in a starving orphan, but it wasn’t out of mercy and it wasn’t out of love. She doesn’t love me, she doesn’t love a single person in this whole damned empire, Gabriel.”

He’d have to delete the security footage. That was all he’d been thinking. He’d have to hunt down any potential eavesdropper and then have the footage disposed of.

“You’ve known her, served her nearly all your life, and right now, I know that she’ll kill us both just for having this conversation. Just for you hearing it. _“_ _Love suffers long and is kind,_ Gabriel. _‘Love does not envy. Love does not parade itself, is not puffed up. Does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil, does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth, bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.’_ How can I ever believe she loves me if she kills me over words on a page?”

“She won’t—” he’d started but faltered as he’d searched his memories for any moment, however fleeting of genuine warmth between mother and daughter, dragon and dragonfly. 

“Just hear me out. There are two more parts. This one is about you… _‘For we know in part and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect has come, then that which is in part will be done away.’_ ”

“How’s that to do with me?”

“You’ll figure it out.”

“And what’s the other part?”

“That’s about me. And you. And the empire. And it’s the most important part. It’s why you need to stop wasting time fretting over me like a wetnurse. _T_ here’s too much ground to cover,” she’d answered, and without even looking at her vandalised page, she recited it. _"For now we see in a mirror darkly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known.’_ _”_

He’d snorted. “Well, that doesn’t sound like gibberish _at all._ ”

“Moses, Jacob, Job, what do they all have in common?”

“Leprosy? Assuming they’re the leper rebels you befriended. Or are they imaginary people from the book?”

“What they have in common with each other, and with everyone in our world, is that they saw through the mirror darkly.”

“What?”

“Our eyes. The lens in _our eyes_. That’s the dark mirror! That's our literal dark mirror which distorts our perception.” So much excitement, she’d gone red in the face. “We are born and we die without ever looking at the sun. The shadows we lived in crept into our hearts and we began to fear the dark as much as we fear the day. All we know to do now is kill, steal and destroy. We hunker down like cavemen with stones and think that this is the whole world, but I, like Moses, Jacob and Job… I want to find God, Gabriel. I want to live in a light so bright it blinds me.”

And he’d laughed outright in her severely displeased face. He’d laughed until his eyes watered. Until he’d had to bend over and grab his knees just to breathe. “You? Our chief hedonist? Our chief _heathen_? Our chief anarchist?”

“I'm not joking. This is the most serious-”

“You went to earth for five days, _five days_ , and you caught religion. Of course you would.” There’d never been anything funnier. “It’s not the brigands I had to worry about, was it, darling? ‘Twas the fucking _priests_!”

“Go get fucked, Gabriel,” she’d hissed at him.

“Is that a divine curse you’re calling down on me, princess? _Priestess_ ,” he corrected himself with a low sweeping bow. “Most High Imperial Prophet.”

“Go ahead and mock your messiah now. You go ahead and mock. I’ll leave you behind when I take my people—”

“On what ship? Hmm? Cause you’re never going to make captain at the rate you’re going, cadet. Or are you going to get… who’s that guy… Ahab?”

“I will leave you here in the darkness, Gabriel.”

He ignored her narrowed eyes and burgeoning pout. “The one with the animals on the ark. Is that Ahab? Or Noah? Something about a whale? Or a shark...”

“I’ll commandeer the Charon and take my people—”

“Into a fucking sun?" he'd been practically howling with laughter. "You’ll dash their feet against a fucking sun, is what you’re going to do to anyone crazy enough to fly in a ship with you. You forget, I’ve _seen_ your test scores, darling. You’re doing astrology when everyone else is studying astronomy. I’m not even sure you can navigate yourself back to your quarters. _Can_ you? The girl with zero direction is going to lead her people. _Which_ people even?”

“Keep this attitude and I’ll make you rue the day you ever crossed my path,” she’d said with her trademark portentous smile.

Which he’d mirrored as best he could. “But don’t I already, princess?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song Lyrics:
> 
> "Pull Me Down" - Mikky Ekko


	5. He-Wolf

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Why couldn't they all just... get along?

She's a silver lining lone ranger riding through an open space

In my mind when she's not right there beside me

And I go crazy cause here isn't where I wanna be

And satisfaction feels like a distant memory

And I can't help myself

All I wanna hear her say is are you mine?

 

***********

 

There were two types of people they had warned her not to engage with back at the Academy — the mentally impaired and the religiously fanatic.

Against all odds, Gabriel Lorca was turning out to be both.

When she had decided to work with him to end the war, she had thought that she’d been looking at something complex. More than assuming that he was from her universe, she’d presumed he was sane. She’d presumed that he’d had logical motivations for his actions. But now, watching him wax nostalgic as he strapped himself up with an assortment of phasers, a plasma cannon, knives and an actual sword, all she could feel was disappointment.

He had tried to sell himself as a man of steely resolve, but he wasn’t. Gabriel Lorca unmasked was a mess of compromises, indulgences and whims.

He wasn’t a great leader of men. He was the type of person who meant it when he asked _“Are you with me?”_

 _… Because if you’re_ not _with me, I’ll need to come up with other plans. Show of hands, who’s with me. Everyone else — feel free to die in my wake._

Not so much tempered steel as really good bubblegum. Stretchy. Sticky. Multipurpose. Good in a war room, handy with a sword, surprisingly strong cartography skills…

Was she supposed to leave him here?

Saru would say yes. Tilly would say yes. Sarek would tell her that he was valuable, even more so now that his great vulnerabilities had been exposed. Sarek, and any Vulcan really, would point out that the easiest way to fight one monster was to recruit a monster of your own. With him at the helm, they’d been single-handedly defeating the Klingons. Trouncing them at their own war games.

And to think he’d been doing all of that as a smokescreen. He’d been winning a war in his spare time to keep them distracted while he had put his true focus into living a double existence and pretending to be someone he’d never met.

Wasn’t that worth something?

_Get your hands on this all new Starfleet Captain. Special Warmonger Edition: Lorca. You can beat him. Torture him. Stick him in an agoniser booth, but look at that, he’s still working! Starting a war? Losing a war? Throwing over a fascist empire? Establishing a fascist empire? Get yourself a Lorca! Looking for a wild card? It doesn’t get any wilder. Ranked the number one Game Changer in not one but two universes. Get one today while offer lasts. Eyes sold separately…_

A little laugh escaped her at the thought, but he didn’t notice. Caught up in his own reverie. Now that she could see him, he was so odd. He had both the hypervigilance of a man who’d spent some time on the receiving end of trauma and the casual arrogance of someone who truly believed that their success was preordained.

She’d only had to mention her counterpart to break all his defences down.

_“I take it that I don’t compare favourably to your original?”_

She’d not meant to send him on a journey of maudlin reflection. It wasn’t as if they had time for sentimentality. At any point Georgiou’s men would be on them. But there was no urgency to him. No fear. No concern as to how his grand scheme was going to play itself out. It hurt to even think how wrong she’d been about him.

Had he always been so… _Seussian ?_

He gone out of his way to rescue a mutineer against all precedent and procedure. Hadn’t it been obvious? She’d been too grateful to him to question his motives, but what could they have possibly been aside from base compulsion? Illogical, counter-productive, need.

“She was so smart,” he murmured, more to himself than to her. It had been a long while since he’d even managed to look at her. “Not Vulcan smart, but tricky. She could see things. Patterns. Correlations. _People_ , you know?”

By which he meant that she had seen _him_.

In this cold ship, with its false light and perpetual shadow… had needing to be seen become a psychological imperative? Was that why it had been so easy for him to pretend to share Starfleet’s enlightenment? Conscious or not, he’d built their drive towards enlightenment into his motif. More moth than man, captivated by beautiful things that hurt him, zero ability to turn away…

It wouldn’t be hard to sway him back on course. All she’d need to do was show him a different light. Not this fanatical bonfire he wanted to pitch himself into, but something contained and directed. Something safe for them all to manage.

Shouldn’t there be some benefit for their having lived so long under his haphazard half-narrative? They’d tiptoed around him for so long, fearing his bite and his bark, when he’d been defanged so long ago. Someone — someone much like herself — had broken him. Someone — herself — had taught him not to bite and to wipe his feet on the carpet.

And that person had died, leaving her to inherit the creature.

_One rabid war dog. Answers to ‘Captain.’ Doesn’t play well with others. Hates children, young people, anyone younger than himself, old people, all people, and alien people. Strangely tolerant of Kelpians. Will lead you into a trap and leave you there to fend for yourself. Might inadvertently rescue you months later. Resentful, reckless, doesn’t give a damn about science. If he ever rolls over and plays dead, expect him to be pulling off a greater deception. If found, please return to Michael Burnham. Any Michael Burnham. In any universe. Whichever is most convenient._

How to play this?

He had lost someone he loved intimately, but that wasn’t what he wanted now. He’d barely looked at her, barely spoken to her back on the Discovery. She thought back to all their conversations… Always a desk or a wall or two feet of space between them. So much room, he’d given Ash parsecs to work with. If he’d loved her like that, he’d not have let Ash happen. He’d rebuff a sexual approach, she didn't doubt, even now with the truth revealed. She was only on this ship because of a series of subconscious delusions. A series of illogical if statements strung together.

 _If_ I find a new Michael Burnham…

 _If_ I get her on my ship…

 _If_ I get the ship back to my universe…

With any level of contemplation, he would have realised that he’d needed to breach _time_ , not space. Spore drives, Tardigrades and Mycelial Networks were all well and good, but what he’d needed to devote himself to was a _time_ machine. And he’d have found one too, had it occurred to him to go after one. Because that was the kind of animal he was.

Or was he?

She had respected him for his discipline and ability to make hard calls, but all of that had been subterfuge. Wasn’t he being a child, refusing to see the world for what it was? A grown child who hadn’t fully grasped the meaning of death?

Michael felt her mouth curling up into a smile as she lit on another oddly appropriate Alice in Wonderland quote. _“Begin at the beginning,”_ and Amanda had tried, and failed, to make her voice sound deep and kingly, _"and go on till you come to the end: then stop."_

Gabriel Lorca had come to his end and, like any brat unfamiliar with things not going his own way, had simply refused to stop. And now he was here, more or less in her possession, and it was up to her to stop him, or simply redirect him. Because that was the power she had over him. The power granted to her by her name and her face and his need to convert his survivor’s guilt into redeemable action.

It could all be undone. All she’d have to do was get hold of him, beam back to the Discovery before Georgiou had them killed, and return his attention to decloaking the Klingon ships. With him leading the effort, they could drive the Klingon threat out of Federation space completely. And they could keep the secret between them that he was really a budding dictator. They could continue as before… She could, at least.

And there was nothing for him here.

He’d wilfully blinded himself to the basic truth that there was no science yet discovered in any universe that would help him solve his ultimate problem. There might be ten billion different universes with ten billion different Michael Burnhams, _his_ Michael was dead. And when he realised how blind he’d been, how much he’d risked and sacrificed for nothing, he’d kill himself.

Which was what this one-man coup was, essentially. Because he knew. His visual impairments had nothing to do with his ability to introspect and brood. While she’d been busy ingratiating herself with his crew, he’d been shutting himself up in his rooms and brooding.

_He knows._

He didn’t want a throne, he didn’t crave love, he wasn’t bound by honour… He’d simply loved and lost a person who’d provided all three, validated his cruelty and set it to purpose…

And apparently, he’d needed that. She couldn’t conjure up a full working of the sort of person he’d been before. With his electric but otherwise dead eyes that only lit up for explosions. His penchants for betrayal; his tendency for dramatic heroics and warmongering; his ludicrously sincere belief in ghosts, fate and destiny.

Had he really believed that all he’d have to do was provide the body? Had he expected her to be automatically possessed by the ghost of his dead lover?

Did she really want him back in the captain’s chair?

It was easy to think of him as a grizzly war dog, but he was worse than that. He was a wolf. A wolf some fool had put on a leash and tried to tame. A wolf who’d started to feel human. A wolf holding his own leash. His only redeeming factor being that he’d not eaten any of the sheep.

He had failed _completely_ to recognise Ash... What sort of shepherd went about rescuing wolves? A shepherd who was secretly a wolf himself was who.

“What are you thinking?” he asked. Eyes meeting hers for only the briefest moments before he fixed his gaze somewhere on her shoulder. “Tell me.”

“I’m thinking that I can’t spare you,” she answered flatly. “Starfleet needs you.”

“What, are they short on evil geniuses these days? They’ll make do.”

She scoffed. Would have laughed out loud at the ego on this super-human, super-emotional, sentimentalist. “ _Genius_ ? Your plan is full of holes,” she counted off on her fingers. All the better to shame him. He’d gone too long without someone bringing him to heel. “You have a general goal, and your focus is commendable, but your daily operations are full of whimsical fancy. That you’ve survived at all is the _only_ evidence of your purported destiny. Two —”

“Oh there’s more?” he bit out, offended but meeting her eyes under her challenge. A raised eyebrow too, because he was never fully in control of his face. Always a smile, or a frown or an eyebrow or a clenching jaw to let you know everything he was thinking. So much emotion under a veneer of nonchalance.

“Two,” she pushed off from where she’d been leaning against the table, to stand over him. To make him look up at her as she held her reprimanding fingers out. She couldn’t be the child. Not if she was to carry him back. She would have to hold the leash. “Everything you do is suspicious. You keep a closet of weapons you’ve salvaged from your dead enemies. That kind of thing _arouses suspicion_. Also, because you’ve made zero efforts with the crew. I’m the only one you’ve got—” she paused to let it sink into all the dark corners of his mind and all the airy empty spaces of his stupidly romantic heart.

She’d be disgusted with him if he wasn’t so unnaturally good at being the invisible monster. “You left a universe of people who don’t like you to return to a universe of people who want you dead. Do you think—” No, she couldn’t ask. The Michael Burnham who had set him on this course hadn’t _asked_. She'd directed. “This is not what she wanted. And it’s most definitely not what I want.”

And just like that, the phaser was in his hands again. Like a child finding his favourite toy after he’d been scolded. Theatrics and drama again. He knew he wasn’t going to shoot her. She knew he wasn't going to shoot her. And he knew she knew… But still.

She had hers already aimed at his chest.

“Don’t try to play me, Burnham.”

“Thirdly—”

He snorted. Actual delight on his face as he watched her count down his failings. His fingers tightened on the trigger again. The blue glow of the phaser crackled with killing intent.

“Thirdly,” she said loudly, “I know you’ve spent your entire life in this place of terror, but it still feels impossible for you to be _this_ bad at social interaction. Do you go out of your way to be hateful? Was it deliberate? So that no one could get close enough to you to notice the inconsistencies? It doesn’t seem possible for one person to rub _everyone_ he’s ever met the wrong way.”

“Well, not everyone,” he drawled. A hint of his quarter-smile in the making.

Burnham swallowed. He wasn’t actually flirting with her. Just trying to derail her as he kept his phaser pointed at her face. “Vulgarity doesn’t suit you.” Which was a lie. It did. “I’m disappointed in you, Gabriel.”

That one hurt him.

“You like killing things and you don’t care which universe you do it in, but from what I’ve seen of the Terran empire so far, killing is just another pastime. You’re not special. The woman who chose you is dead. You don’t have a quest. You don’t have people. You’re not going to be rewarded. Without me, you might as well as kill yourself.”

They both pulled their triggers at the same time.

His shot was wide by millimetres, she’d felt the heat of it on her cheeks. Hers had hit him in the chest and he’d fallen backwards clutching at the smoking breastplate.

“Idiot!” He lay on his back looking up at her, wrenching at the straps of his armour. “I could have… killed you,” he groaned.

Now it was her turn to be smug. She leaned over him with a proper smirk in place as she pulled the smouldering metal off him. “ _Could_ you?”

“You don’t set your phaser to stun when someone’s holding a gun to your face,” he grumbled.

“You’re a horrible shot, Gabriel.”

“Not as good as the Klingon, you mean?”

Another barb meant to distract her. She paused, thinking on how best to subdue and transport him. It would be easy to knock him out. With him unconscious, she could sell a story to Saru and the Discovery without him sabotaging her. She’d never taken a prisoner of war before.

“I can beat you, or I can put you out, which—”

He only looked at her for a long while, eyes calm as a cloudless blue sky, and then it seemed to dawn on him suddenly what she was going to do. “Stand down!" He scrambled to raise himself into a defensible position. "Don’t you fucking dare—”

She hit him in the mouth and then his nose, cutting one and breaking the other. The fight left him immediately. “The story that you tell Saru is this— They took you out the agoniser booth so that I could punish you in private.” She trailed her fingers over his bloody face to make a greater mess of it. His eyes closed when she ran her fingers through his hair, like an ill-tempered, thoroughly spoilt house cat.

When he opened them again, he was staring at her lips.

Eyes to lips. Lips to eyes. Zero concern for his busted up face.

“And I had to comply to maintain the deception,” she continued.

She put a hand to the side of his head and he groaned as her fingers ruffled his hair. The only type of pain he still felt, apparently.

“You think I’ll go gently into the light?” he scoffed. “Just because you ask nicely?”

Still, he made no further effort to fight her off or get to his feet. She had prepared herself to take him back through force if necessary, but as expected, he couldn’t and wouldn’t hurt her… “You’re not from another dimension,” she slid her hand from his head to his neck. If he wasn’t such a romantic sap, he’d have noticed her fingers settling in on his pressure point. Instead, he leaned into the touch. “You’re not from an empire of xenophobes, you’re not a mass murderer. You’re the captain of the USS Discovery, I’m Specialist Burnham who you rescued for reasons that don’t include you being in love with me—”

“I could never.”

She should knock him out now, but curiosity kept her there, with her hands on him. “You tell me then, what it is between us.”

It would be interesting. She could understand if he said resentment. Or hate. He had come a long way to find a replica only to realise that even the best clones were different on the inside.

Still, he had saved her from life in prison.

Whatever he’d done or traded or sacrificed to work that out with the Starfleet command, he’d done it for her. And it had been nice, in retrospect, having him provide that shield. Having him negotiate her freedom on her behalf after the Starfleet had already discarded her.

It would be…  _nice_ , she formulated, to own someone like him. As opposed to something like Ash.

She tried to wonder at the kind of life her counterpart had lived. To keep something like him around her and domesticate it. To shut her eyes and sleep next to the man who slept with phasers under his pillow. Had it been bravery, or just unbridled chaos? Foolishness all-around?

She’d lost control of Ash in all of one day while her other self had kept Gabriel Lorca on retainer even after her death.

“Burnham?”

It was almost cosy. The two of them huddled together. His head halfway in her lap, his body stretched out languid. One hand on his throat the other still in his hair… He looked up at her, blood making a thorough mess of his face.

She had half an urge to touch his belly. Just to feel him purr. She knew that was what he’d do. His eyes would flutter shut and he’d purr.

A king of cats, maybe.

Which would make her a cat-owner… Sarek had never let them keep pets. Not even Spock. And now to take on a half-man, half-cat, half-wolf warlord...

“Burnham?”

“Yes?”

“It’s Captain Lorca to you,” he announced, pinching the bridge of his nose to stem the blood. “And just for the record, I’m the _second_ captain you’ve physically assaulted in under a year. Make of that what you will.”

She applied pressure and watched the light fade from his eyes. Most people on the receiving end of a Vulcan Nerve Pinch went rigid and lost consciousness immediately. Lorca, ever contrary, relaxed into it. As if he was gently drifting off to sleep.

“Do you think he’s still alive?” she asked before he went fully under.

He closed his eyes slowly. “Who?”

“ _My_ Gabriel. If he swapped places with you, do you think he’s alive here somewhere?”

“ _Your_ Garbiel?” he smirked, finding victory in her word choice. "Do you have one?" he slurred.

“You know what I meant to—”

“Of course he is.” And then he yawned. _Yawned_ , and wiggled his head further onto her lap. As if he were settling in for an afternoon nap. “Survival is what we Gabriel Lorcas do. Unless he was like Tilly. In which case he’d have been shot on sight.”

His breathing slowed. Muscles relaxed…

“And what about your Burnham who went missing?” she asked quickly, so that it’d be the last thing he heard before he went under. “If you believe so much in fate, isn’t it likely that your Michael met up with my Gabriel? Wouldn't he have rescued her in your stead? Think about it. They could be safe somewhere, lying low. Somewhere, in some universe or the other. Help us rescue our man, maybe find your Michael in the process…”

His only response had been to try to raise his hand… But he was too far gone for anything else. She checked his pulse and found the slow steady rhythm of unconsciousness.

She sighed, and then readjusted their positions to where she was sitting beside him, just touching his shoulder... The way Specialist Burnham would have sat beside any unconscious Starfleet Captain.

Even the title he had given her was evidence of his fanciful nonsense. _Specialist?_

She touched the comm link, and Saru’s voice crackled over the line full of worry and concern over their whereabouts. Saru who had reacted to her, the person he’d worked beside for five years, as a threat but never Lorca, the inter-dimensional man of mystery and mayhem. “I’ve got the Captain, Saru. Two for transport.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song Lyrics:  
> "R U Mine?" - Arctic Monkeys
> 
>  
> 
> Idk, I figured it would be fun to have a version of Michael Burnham who was the furthest thing from logical. Powered by stardust and all the nonsense the Vulcans tweaked out of PU Michael. I thought it would be interesting to have a version of Michael who was horrible at all things military. I mean, what would be the odds that they were both hyper-competent soldiers? 
> 
> Plus Lorca being all "Welcome Home" got me thinking "Whoa, the cognitive dissonance is real with this guy." Instead of accepting that his partner was dead and/or missing, he found a replacement and told himself that she just had a bit of amnesia. That everything would work itself out when he got her in familiar surroundings. 
> 
> I think honestly, I really expected him and Burnham to hash it out and for him to go back to the ship and for the Discovery to just keep going on adventures, while Burnham basically blackmailed him into being a decent captain and he helped her come out of her Vulcan shell, going on crazy side quests from time to time where leather jackets, breastplates and sword-fighting skills were an absolute must.
> 
> I'd like to believe that all the Michael Burnhams commit crimes in the name of Starfleet Ideals and that all the Lorcas are just there hovering like "Well, I don't give a damn, but sure. Why not?"


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